The Flowers of Buffoonery

By: Osamu Dazai

Narrated by: Brian Nishii

For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel to No Longer Human

The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.

While No Longer Human delves into the darkest corners of human consciousness, The Flowers of Buffoonery pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love, and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in prewar Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a darkly humorous and fresh addition to Osamu Dazai’s masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.

©2023 Sam Bett (P)2023 New Directions Publishing Corp.

Quick Read

The narrator was amazing! Was a super quick read! Definitely recommend this book! !

A meandering mess

Big Osamu Dazai fan. Have read Setting Sun and No Longer Human several times over. I highly recommend both of those audiobooks-and you can't even imagine the same author wrote both books.

In the Flowers of Buffoonery, I tried it a few times, but it has no flow. It starts off jumbled. The reader struggles to find any traction in the story. It has weird interjections from the author where he pretends not to be referencing his real life events, or maybe he admits. Hard to tell.

Probably, this book was a lot more interesting at the time when the author's first suicide attempt was publicized. In comparison to his other books, which are both stellar, this did nothing for me. And I seriously gave it a few tries. Narration was perfect as always, but so what?